Life's Journal
by RavenWingDark
Summary: Starting from when Life was first created, through his understanding of the world around him as he continues to grow and protect Heartflame Island. During his quest to save the Eastern Ruins, he also must deal with the threat from the mayor of being shut down permanently. Added plot, friendships and drama to keep the story entertaining. Life h/c. Eventual LifexMarcia
1. Life's First Week

**Hey, I loved the idea of someone learning what it means to be human with little to no base, so I gathered up what i know about developmental psychology and what I thought a robot would think! I hope you guys like it!**

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 **Life's Journal**

-Day 33, Winter 2022 (Fri)

/SYSTEM START/

COMMAND: 'Innocent Life'

. . .

/ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE/

The image sent to the robotic boy disappeared from his visual systems and stored into his system memory for later use. Heartflame Island. He knew it looked like the human representation of the heart. Although the symbol itself was inaccurate to the actual muscle.

He opened his eyes and caught his first real glimpse of the world through the doors of his shine pod.

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-Day 1, Spring 2023 (Mon)

Life had been briefly taught how to farm by two humans. Then he had been returned to his creator, Doctor Hope only to be ordered to follow a man by the name of Moonlight back to the Eastern Ruins. He had been warned by the others that Moonlight was strange but Life didn't comprehend what was strange about him. Besides the mention the man had made to 'beauty'.

Life now stood over the 3x3 plowed plot of land on the roof of the Eastern Ruins. He had planted and watered the seeds exactly as he had been taught. Gayak didn't want him to leave the ruins until he had harvested the crops. He didn't have a problem with that. He was to spend the rest of his artificial life in the ruins, watching over the lands.

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-Day 3, Spring 2023 (Wed)

Life had visitors two days later, all the students from the school. They all had different speech patterns, appearances and personalities. Life had a difficult time understanding what they were saying. The only syntax had he had been programmed to fully comprehend was that of Doctor Hope's. After having several children talk to him, he started picking up what they were saying better.

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-Day 5, Spring 2023 (Fri)

It occurred to Life that he was now one week old. Not his body, as Doctor Hope had started creating the metal structure and first working parts that would eventually become his body over three years ago, but his functioning data core. It counted in the same way that a human baby didn't age until he was born even though it was in development for nine months before then.

When he reached the farm level, he was surprised to see water pouring down onto his plants, as if the clouds themselves were a watering can. He had the information required in his data banks, just as he automatically could identify a type of seed or the ideal date of harvest, he knew the word for the act of water falling from the stratosphere. Rain.

After checking on the plants, he went back to the room given to him by Doctor Hope and tried to make Herbal Tea. It didn't taste like anything.

* * *

-Day 7, Spring 2023 (Sun)

When Life woke up, Franco and Moonlight were in his room and told him his turnips were ready. Life, thanks to his programming already knew this but did not say so. The three of them took the elevator upstairs and Life carefully uprooted and shipped each turnip.

"Good job on your turnips, Life." Moonlight said, his mouth moving into a small smile.

"My turnips?" Life turned to the artist and asked. "I don't understand."

Moonlight looked confused for a moment. "You planted and took care of them. So they're yours. When you sell them, you'll make a profit."

"Mine," Life said carefully, dropping the final turnip into the shipping bin. He, an artificial life created by another, had ownership over a smaller life form in which he had helped grow. Life's AI program worked to understand what Moonlight had told him. "Alright."

Soon after, Moonlight and Franco escorted him to Doctor Hope's laboratory. Doctor Hope's energy raised when he saw Life and he looked genuinely pleased to see him, which confused Life.

Marcia the young woman and Million the shop-owner drove Life around town showing him different stores and houses and even the school Marcia attended. When Marcia asked Life questions about his first week at the Eastern Ruins, Life understood that she wanted more than statistical information.

Nine turnips were grown over six days came to his mind as an answer. Instead, he said. "I was able to grow some turnips. Next time, I hope to grow more."

Marcia laughed at his response and continued talking.

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 **I know there isn't really a fanbase for Innocent Life but if you're reading this, please review and let me know if you want more!**


	2. Life's Second Week

**Thanks so much for the review! I honestly wasn't sure if anyone was still visiting the Innocent Life page but I remember how disappointed I was about the lack of stories (because it's such a cool concept!) so I put it up in case someone looked at it!**

 **ANyway, this is Life's second week!**

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-Day 13, Spring 2023 (Sat)

Life had had a successful week and already sent out a shipment of asparagus and perfected three different types of tea and weeded the entire farm level. Usually,job having been completed, he would go into sleep mode until the next day but he had finished particularly early. Instead, he went to Moonlight's room. He stopped in front of an abstract painting consisting of heavy and light strokes of warm colors. Puzzled, he activated the zoom function in his eyes.

"Do you like it?" Moonlight said from behind him. Judging by the thickness of his voice, he must have just woken. Life looked at the painting again. It didn't mean anything.

He knew humans strove from originality and he was programmed not to say everything that occurred to his thought processing system. Instead, he told Moonlight what he thought he would like to hear.

"It's interesting."

Moonlight laughed loudly, surprising Life, who had not predicted that response.

"You don't need to say that, Life. I know you haven't grasped the concept of art and beauty yet, but don't worry." Moonlight said. Life thought briefly that Moonlight had become fond of him. The artist led him to another painting, this one was a painting of the ruins. It was very similar to the image in his head of the ruins. "Is this one easier for you to understand? It's less abstract."

"Yes." Life said. But if anything, this one left him more confused. In this day and age, there were several methods of preserving images and even memories. Life himself could even take pictures using his own built-in technology. Spending time and resources in order to create an imperfect representation of a location that Moonlight saw everyday was incredibly illogical.

Moonlight laughed again. "See? You're gonna be my biggest fan in no time at all!"

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 **3rd week will be up soon!**


	3. Life's Third Week

**lol only took half an hour to get this chapter out :) And so the drama begins...**

 **Life's Third Week**

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-Day 15, Spring 2023 (Tues)

When Life woke up at 6 sharp as dictated by his hardware, he saw Doctor Hope waiting for him to wake up, sitting at the table.

"Doctor Hope." Life acknowledged. His father made the motion he had been programmed with to come to. Life found it had always been easiest to interact with him than anyone else because he understood Life's coding.

"Life, yesterday the mayor asked me to come into his office. He is pushing a vote to have you shut down. He thinks you're a danger to society."

"Shut down." Life repeated in monotone. His work hadn't been finished. He hadn't rejuvenated the Eastern Ruins. He couldn't stop until he fixed the Ruins…

"It's not going to happen, Life. And it will take the mayor at least an entire season to gain enough footing to authorize destruction of someone else property." Doctor Hope explained. Life understood that the property was him and that he belonged to Doctor Hope.

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-Day 19, Spring 2023 (Fri)

Life was getting back from watering the turnips he had purchased when he saw Moonlight walking around the floor that he 'lived' on. Looking up at the corner of his sight, he read the green digital clock. 3:04 PM. Moonlight must have just woken up. Moonlight looked up at him.

"Ah, Life! Good morning!"

"Good…morning." Life returned, realizing it would be wrong to argue for 'good afternoon'. He was supposed to respond in the same way, after all.

Moonlight lifted a pot on the kitchenette in his hand.

"Do you know how to use this?"

"Do you mean boiling food items?" Life inquired, moving to face Moonlight. Why was he here? Had he come all this way because he was curious?

"Can you make some tea?"

"Yes."

Moonlight rolled his eyes. "Will you?"

Oh, that's what he meant. Life nodded and accepted the pot, adding water and waiting for it to boil, staring straight ahead. He felt Moonlight's eyes watching him carefully. Finally, he poured some into a cup and steeped herbs in it for two minutes before handing the drink to Moonlight.

He didn't drink it right away like he did, instead he blew on it and sipped it gingerly, his expression wistful. "It's not bad, Life. Who would've thought…"

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-Day 20, Spring 2023

Life saw Franco the next day. He explained to Life that Moonlight had wanted to spend time with him. There was no real motive behind it, simply, Moonlight was following a natural urge to seek companionship. Just like Life needed to recharge every night, humans needed to fulfill a similar gauge or they'd become lonely and sad.

It meant Moonlight felt a connection or friendship. Life himself didn't understand this concept of friendship but he enjoyed the idea of being able to go to the man when he had inquiries about farming. And he knew that the more people who liked him, the less likely it was that the order to have him destroyed would pass.

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 **Yeah, Moonlight wanted to see if Life could learn human things like how to make food taste good. When he saw that he could, it just confirmed what he already thought-that given time, Life could be a sentient being and that destroying him would be destroying something that will eventually have a conscious. And Moonlight already has a soft spot for him, tbh.**

 **Anyway, please review, I'd love to hear how you like the story so far :)**


	4. Life's 4th and 5th Week

-Day 21, Spring 2023 (Sun)

Life harvested and shipped the regrown asparagus, cleaned the kitchen and began his jog towards Doctor Hope's laboratory. Right before his weekly maintenance, Life always felt a little heavy. It was a strange sensation that had been hard for him to pin down the first couple weeks but as he got used to having a body, he started to understand his limits and strengths better. He found it easy to understand spoken English (although he had found his eyes took a long time to appraise handwriting, a small thing Dr. Hope had over-looked and promised to fix the following week) and was beginning to understand the fragile bridges of human thought that brought them from content to excited to worried or tired. Before he saw them as randomly generated, inexplicable leaps.

Life asked Doctor Hope after his maintenance why he felt strange before the maintenance. He seemed surprised and Life realized that it had only been the second question Life had ever asked his father.

Doctor Hope cleared his throat, eager to answer the question clearly for him. "It's called cyber pollution. With so many technologies around in the modern era, very fine functions of technologies begin to lag very quickly. All the floating ones and zeros and radio waves slow down reaction times like sand in a gear. That's one of the reasons why it's important for you to come in every week."

"Oh." Particles of sand in his gears, it made sense. His body collected viruses that would pull him away from his work at the Eastern Ruins. He knew now, more than ever, how important it was that he got to Doctor Hope's work place every Sunday lest he be unable to work ore and till land in the Eastern Ruins.

After Life left he would make sure to be extra careful.

When he started his jog back, he saw Marcia and one of the other students walking by. He didn't think to say hello but Marcia waved at him. The other girl giggled and yelled: "LIFE ALERT!"

Life's head cocked in confusion, since he made few facial expressions, this was a way for him to tacitly express confusion.

"Shut up," Marcia, bumped against her classmate. "Sorry, Life, she was just messing around."

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-Day 28, Spring 2023 (Sun)

Life stepped out of the shine pod.

"Thank you."

Doctor Hope nodded. "I see you're starting to understand the subtleties of human communication. Anyways, your maintenance went well, as usual. I'll have no worries with sending you to work in the ruins for another week."

Life picked up the noise of the sliding door opening. A young man with dark brown hair walked in and dropped his jaw in surprise.

"Grandpa, you finished him?" The man ran up to the two of them and walked around Life, studying him carefully. Life watched him in curiosity. Typically people acted friendly towards him (or cold, like the mayor and his son) but never this excited.

"Yes, I finished ahead of schedule. He's been online since the end of winter."

"He looks…so conscious…" the young man breathed.

"He is." Doctor Hope gestured for Life to introduce himself so he turned around to face the man.

"It's nice to meet you, my name is Life."

"I know. My name's Tommy. I'm Doctor Hope's son. I just finished college." He took Life's hand and examined it briefly before turning to the doctor.

"How's his fine motor function? When I left, we were having trouble getting the thumb to respond simultaneously with the index finger of his right hand. And how did you fix that over-heating problem in the primary processing circuit?"

Doctor Hope ignored Tommy and turned to Life to explain. "Tommy's been helping me since we were making your prototype four years ago. Pardon him if he has trouble seeing you as you are now."

Life nodded. "My hand works well now, so Doctor Hope must have fixed it. Are you an inventor too, then?"

Tommy frowned. "No. You were my first and last project. I don't want to be an engineer. I want to try to save the Island. There is a lot of unexplored land that might hold the secret to how to save the Island. I gave up on doing that the scientific way. No offense."

"No offense taken." Life replied. It hadn't been the first time he had heard this. It was implied by the mayor and his son as well.

Just then, the Mayor entered and nodded towards Tommy and Life before heading into the living room with Doctor Hope to discuss something.

Tommy caught on the tension."Do you know how the Mayor reacted to your citizenship?" He looked troubled.

"He seems to be experiencing distrust and unease at my citizenship. Particularly because Doctor Hope classified me as a Male instead of a Robot."

"Oh. Well, don't let him get to you, he'll get used to you eventually." Tommy reassured him. "You're not just programming, you're an AI. You're the most human robot ever made."

Just then Marcia ran in. "Life! There you are! Oh, and Tommy, nice to see you again!" She stopped in front of them and frowned. "You're getting another check-up? Life, are you ill?"

"No."

"Oh, okay. I'm glad. You sure do visit Dr. Hope's a lot though!"

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 **Alright! So the plot sort of sets!**


	5. Life's 5th Week Continued

-Day 29, Spring 2023

Life worked on harvesting the last of the turnips, asparagus, and cucumbers. He could fill the basket with each load. The elevator whirred as someone arrived at the top floor. Whether it was the class or Midnight, he didn't know. Once he had filled his basket and risen, he got a good view of who it was. Tommy Hope.

"Good morning." Life said.

"Morning." Tommy's eyes held a flash of intrigue. No words were exchanged between them for a several seconds and Life went back to work harvesting, coming to the conclusion that conversation had been disengaged. He had performed this particular dialogue several times with other people as they walked by him.

"Life."

Life returned attention to Tommy, tilting his head quizzically. Tommy took a few steps closer until he was directly in front of Life.

"About the festival yesterday."

After his check up yesterday, Marcia had taken him to the Spring Festival and Life had gone to the altar of the Fire Spirit, where his crops had been placed, simply stood there.

"Gayak mentioned what the mayor's son, Charles, said. 'What's wrong with auto-farmed crops?' He supports machines harvesting crops as long as they don't have a face. That's pretty annoying, but what did I expect?" Tommy shrugged.

"I was puzzled, myself."

Tommy gave Life another strange look. "Really? Hm, anyway, I came to let you know that the mayor was impressed by how much you harvested but he's still not on board with having you around. He's moving forward with the plan to shut you down. How do you feel about that?"

In his head, Life saw a picture of his body, his circuit panel exposed and open, his eyes graying and his chin falling to his chest. Had he just imagined something he had no data for? He heard a whoosh between his ears as his processor ventilated in order to cope with the amount of data he was processing. It took a moment for him to refocus his attention.

"It would be a shame for all of Doctor Hope's hard work to go to waste." Life replied.

"Is that how you really feel?" Tommy's expression grew grim and he bent down and searched among the cracked stone for a few minutes. Life stayed trained on him the whole time, not willing to repeat his past mistake of taking away his attention.

Finally, Tommy stood up again, holding a small gecko in his hand.

"What if I killed this gecko right now?" Tommy's hand tightened around the creature as it tried to scuttle out of his palm. "Would that be a shame?"

Life stared hard at the creature. His processor started to make noise again, louder than before. Perhaps the overheating in his primary circuit hadn't been completely amended after all.

 _whiiiiirrrrrrrrr_

He couldn't picture what a dead gecko would look like but the idea made him feel distinctly wrong, like if he considered hitting his crops with a hammer or hoe. He remembered the dancing and singing villagers from the day before. "It would be horrible. That's a life."

Tommy bent over a set the gecko down gently where he had found it. "And what do you think you are?"


End file.
